Resources on Friendship Matters

For Further Reading

Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
This text covers friendship in the context of virtue and the pursuit of the good life. In so doing, Aristotle offers a classical account of what it means to be a good friend and to aspire to the highest good in our relationships.
City of God
Augustine
This influential apologetic case for seeking citizenship in the eternal City of God rather than settling for the earthly city provides classic Christian reflections on the nature of love, friendship, and happiness.
Confessions
Augustine
In this intense personal testimony, Augustine shares the travails and the rewards of friendship on his pilgrimage from a young upstart rhetorician to a bishop and pioneer of the early Christian church.
Reclaiming Friendship: Relating to Each Other in a Frenzied World
Ajith Fernando
Reclaiming Friendship offers practical guidance on friendship by applying basic biblical wisdom from the book of Proverbs to the practice of Christian friendship in a contemporary world filled with complex challenges to Christian faith and life.
Spiritual Friendship
Wesley Hill
This book stresses the importance of Godward and God-honoring friendship in light of God’s revealed Word and in so doing offers classical and Christian wisdom on the topic. Wesley Hill has also built a community forum on God, Sexuality, and Relationships: https://spiritualfriendship.org.
The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis masterfully weaves together insights on love from a perspective informed by philosophy, theology, and literature, and thereby provides useful discussions of the four different types of love animating human experience
Becoming Friends: Worship, Justice, and the Practice of Christian Friendship
Paul J. Wadell
Becoming Friends argues that, through rituals and practices of Christian worship, we come to understand the nature of the Christian life and acquire the virtues and dispositions that make the Christian life what it is.